


teeth.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fallen Castiel, Hobo Castiel, Homeless Castiel, Human Castiel, M/M, post season eight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:33:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He brushes his teeth until his gums bleed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	teeth.

I.

He brushes his teeth until his gums bleed.

He scrubs the top row of teeth, then the bottom, then the top again.  He brushes the roof of his mouth and the insides of his cheeks, and lingers in particular on the blister that’s formed on the inside of his mouth, the corner of his lip.  He brushes his tongue, and grips the toothbrush tightly.  He forces the brush to the back of his throat, scrubbing out his mouth until he gags.

The bristles are stiff, and after he scours his teeth he finds that he’s drawn blood.  He can taste blood on his tongue and in the back of his mouth, long after he rinses with antibacterial mouthwash.  

He spits, and toothpaste splatters in the sink; white and blue stripes mingled with pale pink blood and bits of ground beef, and he turns on the faucet and watches as the water rinses it all away and down the drain.

II.

He carefully tears the wrapper off his new toothbrush: clear plastic, a filmy green.  Only sixty-nine cents at the grocery store.  There had been all sorts of toothbrushes in the dental hygiene aisle, so many that the process of picking one out had set the pulse in his head to pounding again.  Some had rubber grips on the handles; some had soft, flexible bristles designed for reaching the crevices between his teeth.  Some toothbrushes were two-toned: neon green and orange, purple and dark blue, or else pink and yellow, blue and silver.

In the end, he’d picked the cheapest toothbrush he could find.  Clear plastic, a filmy green.  

He’d spent more time on the toothpaste.  Dean had stressed to him, once, the importance of picking the right brand of toothpaste.  Hunters don’t have dental plans, Dean said.  You’ve got to take care of whatever amount of teeth you have left, after knuckles to the face in a barroom brawl or after a poltergeist slams you face-first into a steel support beam.  

Castiel had informed him that angels don’t have a need for a dental plan, and Dean had said, Well, make sure you buy something ADA-approved any-fucking-way, smartass, and that’s what Castiel has done.  He’d looked down the row of toothpaste until he’d found an ADA-approved brand that boasted cavity prevention and protection from gingivitis.

He spends considerably more on the toothpaste than the toothbrush, a total of three dollars and seventy-seven cents, but Dean hadn’t offered any opinions on bristle hardness or softness that he can remember, and he also spends four-sixty-five on an antiseptic rinse.  

He buys soap, too, and deodorant, but only the off-brand, and the rest of his twenty-dollar bill he spends on beef jerky and trail mix and on the hamburgers for sale on the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s later that night.

III.

He tests the blister afterward, touching his tongue to the corner of his mouth.  He can’t seem to stop testing it, even though it only makes matters worse. There’s nothing to be done but leave it alone, but Castiel finds his tongue sneaking back to prod at the blister even in the half-sleep before he wakes.

He remembers Dean getting angry, once.  Will you stop fucking apologizing, he’d snapped. Jesus Christ, don’t keep harping on that shit, Cas, I’m sick of hearing it.  It doesn’t change a damn thing.

But he can’t seem to leave things alone.  He keeps touching the edge of his mouth, right where the skin has gone raw and puckered, and he traces the edge of it with his fingers and picks at it with his nails until he can taste blood in his mouth.

IV.

There’s a blister forming on the inside of his cheek, and it’s all he can think about, never mind how badly his knees are aching from being packed with pea-sized bits of gravel as he kneels in front of the driver’s side seat.  

A blister, he thinks, and doesn’t really pay attention to the pull and slide in and out of his mouth, or the fingers pulling sharply on his hair.  It’s just a blister, he reassures himself.  He understands that humans develop blisters all the time. 

He thinks of blisters, and thinks of Dean.  He thinks of the blisters on Dean’s hands after sharpening knives.  He thinks of blisters on Dean’s hands after purgatory, the welts on his hands that he’d watched forming as Dean had gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white.

I could have saved you, Dean had said quietly, and Castiel had watched as a muscle quivered in his jaw, and he swallows rapidly, choking down bile and thinking  _it’s only a blister_ and he does taste blood, too, and his head is pounding, but that doesn’t bother him nearly as much as that one spot on the edge of his mouth that’s turning raw like ground meat and it’s only a blister and it’s almost over and it’s almost over.

V.  

The undersides of his button-down are stiff with dried sweat, and his dress pants are greasy to the touch.  There’s a sour taste in his mouth from, he assumes, going days without brushing his teeth, but until now he’s only had an academic knowledge of what Dean had called  _dragon breath_  and never any real world application.

But he can stand the sweat and the bad breath.  These, he believes, are the trivialities of being human.  They are to be borne, or remedied if possible and convenient at the time.  Humans have wallowed in bodily filth for centuries, in his opinion, but he can’t seem to tolerate is the way his head is pounding, the way his limbs feel shaky and listless.  

Low blood sugar, he thinks, and he’d never before considered the vast importance of dinner until now, but he remembers that Dean had wanted to impress on him the extreme importance of eating a burger around six o’clock p.m.  

He thinks he understands what Dean means, now.

Angels don’t need to eat, Castiel had remarked, and Dean had said, Bullshit, and handed him a hamburger encased in a plastic wrap.  

Always eat dinner, Dean had told him, that’s one thing you don’t ever want to go without, and Castiel had watched Dean sink his teeth into his burger like a starving man, and he had disagreed..


End file.
